Slowly Broken

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The third and final site visit of the Rustenburg Backyard Shack Survey took place this past weekend in Rustenburg North, a centrally located suburb built in the early 1900s for the white mine managers of the local platinum mines. Over the the course of the last 20 years, 'white-flight' from the inner ring suburbs of Rustenburg to the newly developed eastern fringe of the city has been accompanied by an influx of black residents into the central areas that during the apartheid era were earmarked for whites only. For the most part, this is a typical feature of South African post apartheid settlement dynamics. In some instances, up to 25 backyard shacks have been built on the 1/2 acre properties that characterise the neighborhood. Landlord absenteeism and apathy over conditions on their properties has allowed Rustenburg North to slowly degrade, causing a consistent decline in property values and service standards.   

 

The Saint of Sondela

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The picture above is of a woman that I met while conducting the second leg of the Rustenburg Backyard Shack Survey in Sondela last weekend. She did not share her name over the course of the interview, but did share enough of her own story to paint an intriguing and rather piognant picture of life in the backyards.


She is a widow and the owner of a low cost housing unit in the township. As she lead me down the thin alley that divides the main house from the backyard shacks (which is a bit of a misnomer since they are made of brick and morter) en route to secure an interview with someone living in the backyard, she patted the walls of the shacks to draw attention to their sturdiness and said to me, "The women in this area deserve an award. You know I built these rooms with only my sewing machine...and that young girl you met when you came to my door, she is my daughter and she is in University...how do you think I pay for that?"


She is one of many women that rely on the income generated from the rent earned from migrant mine labourers, a practice that is for all intents and purposes illegal in the eyes of the government. But this is no criminal. Far from it. She struck me as a saint, and I promised her that I would share her story.

Sondela - Come Together

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Rustenburg Extension 22 - a low cost housing project flanking the platinum mining belt on the edge of the city - was built in the early 2000s by the Rustenburg Local Municipality. While originally designed as a one-stand-one-house development typical of the South African low cost housing delivery program, over the years shacks have mushroomed in the backyards giving rise to what could best be described as 'Xhosa Town'. The locals do not speak of Ext. 22, instead they choose to refer to the place as Sondela. In the Xhosa language, 'Sondela' means to 'Come Together', and this is exactly what many rural Xhosa's from the Eastern Cape seeking work in the shafts have done here. It is an incredibly dense residential environment. Some properties can harbour as many as 20 3x2m shacks, some fashioned as zinc boxes, others made from the leftovers of the original development. Its vibrancy would fool you into believing that the people living there were casting a blind eye on the squalor that surrounds them.

The second phase of the Rustenburg Backyard Shack Survey took place in Sondela this past weekend. On the day we were able to complete 280 one-on-one interviews with backyard tenants and landlords in an attempt to unpack the backyard housing environment. The information generated by the Rustenburg Backyard Shack Survey is being used to inform the North West Informal Settlement Upgrading Program (NW ISUP) of the North West Department of Housing. SATPLAN and the CSIR Satellite Applications Centre have been actively involved in the NW ISUP over the last 12 months and have compiled a spatial information framework of informal settlements for all municipalities in the North West Province.    

Rustenburg Backyard Shack Survey Yields First Data Haul

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The first of three site visits for the Rustenburg Backyard Shack Survey took place today in Thlabane; a well established peri-urban community and former black township with an endearing rural character. 272 questionnaires were completed with the help of 16 Community Development Workers (CDWs). The survey will provide insights into the informal housing market, shack conditions and a variety of baseline demographics. The second phase of the survey travels to the recently built low cost housing development of Rustenburg Ext 22, more affectionately known as 'Sondela' - home to many foreign nationals and a sizable portion of the migrant labour force feeding the region's platinum mines. Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device